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badgered Captain Carrington for anything, with the possible
    exception of being released from the absurd agreement. “Your papa sounds like a
    kind man.”
    Abbey smiled, her full lips stretching across a row of straight, white teeth.
    “He was very kind, and very good to me,” she said, a distant look clouding her
    eyes for a moment. “But, I think, not as good as Lord Darfield has been to me,”
    she added softly.
    Sam managed to hide his great surprise behind a cough. “ Lord Darfield?”
    “From the time I left the ship, apparently I was never far from his thoughts,”
    she said wistfully, and looked out the window. “My first year at school in Rome,
    he sent me a violin. He is a great lover of music, you know, and thought it would be very nice of me to learn to play.”
    Stunned, Sam was almost afraid to ask. “Did you?”
    “Certainly! And the times when I despaired of ever mastering the silly thing,
    Papa would tell me that Michael… Lord Darfield… was so looking forward to
    hearing me play, I would try even harder. And he would send little trinkets, too,” she said, flicking one of the amethyst earrings dangling from her earlobes. “He sent these on my sixteenth birthday. When I was bound for Egypt,
    he sent me a history book on the Egyptian culture, so I would know what to
    expect. I am particularly grateful to him for that, for certainly I would never have expected what I found there!”
    “Lord Darfield sent you those things,” Sam stated doubtfully.
    Abbey seemed oblivious to his surprise and smiled warmly. “He’s quite thoughtful, isn’t he?”
    Sam frowned. “But you never saw him.”
    “Well, not in person. But he kept in constant contact with my father.”
    In disbelief, Sam stared at the foolish young romantic, who was quite oblivious
    to his astonishment. Surely she could not be so naive. Something was terribly
    wrong. Sam had known Michael Ingram since they were young men.
    Never once had
    Michael mentioned a word of Abigail Carrington, until a few days ago, when he
    had requested Sam’s presence at Blessing Park to assist him in an
    “indelicate
    matter.”
    That matter, as it had turned out, was an accursed agreement, which Michael had
    been forced into at the age of nineteen so that he might borrow money and pay
    the debts his father had amassed. Michael had turned to Captain Carrington,
    seeking out the very wealthy captain in a desperate bid to save his family from
    complete ruin.
    The captain had been more than happy to oblige. The agreement they reached
    stipulated that if Michael had not repaid his debts in full by the time Captain
    Carrington died, he would take Abigail Carrington to wife. What at one time had
    seemed a rather innocuous arrangement to care for an only child had turned into
    a nightmare for Michael. At the time he signed the agreement, he had been
    unaware of the importance of a simple clause that stipulated any other debts
    incurred by Michael or his family against Carrington were subject to the same
    terms until all debts were paid in full. Michael did not know, until two months
    ago when the papers arrived, that his father had borrowed repeatedly from Carrington. As Michael explained it to Sam, he could no more extract himself
    from the agreement than he could remove his own skin.
    “The agreement is explicit, Sam. My solicitors have reviewed the documentation
    and advise me it fully supports the claim that our debts were never repaid in
    full, despite the fact that I could have given the captain double what was owed.
    It would seem that my father gambled and drank away the entire family fortune
    not once but twice,” Michael had explained bitterly,“and neither he nor the captain ever saw fit to tell me. I would expect as much from Father, but not
    Carrington. He never told me of the accumulating debt.”
    “But surely there is a way out! Are there no male relatives?”
    “A son of a cousin somewhere, but it hardly matters. In the most legal sense